“Are you the person that we can ask questions? Or are you just a guard?” The New York Times interviews a security guard at the Guggenheim’s James Turrell exhibition. [The New York Times]

The Metropolitan Opera won’t bow to protesters who’d like to see the opera take a stance on the Russian government’s controversial gay rights laws, and also the government’s denial of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” premiered as the opera’s season opener last night. [Bloomberg]

The Art Loss Register has used some rather questionable methods to track lost art work. For example, the Register led a collector to believe a painting was not stolen, when in fact it was, so that he would buy it and unwittingly help the company collect a fee for its retrieval. [The New York Times]

Did Russia censor all 26,439 Squarespace sites over a satirical gay art PDF? So reads the headline of an article reporting on Loo.ch, the New York-based art, technology, criticism, and travel website run by Ukrainian expats Natasha Masharova and Anatoli Ulyanov since 2010. They believe two pieces criticizing Russia’s new anti-gay propaganda laws caused the block. Sounds plausible, but could more than one of these 26,439 other sites have published a few critical words on the law? [Animal]

Blackberry is in a “death spiral.” They laid off forty percent of their workforce and report a second quarter loss of one billion on 1.6 billion in revenues. Queue the think pieces. [Washington Post]

Art collector Peter Brant, also owner of the Greenwich Polo Club, introduced a Groupon to a recent weekend event. In addition to the polo match, VIPs were given a tour of Brant’s art center; the rest watched the horses. [Boston.com]

Peter Brant is more than just an art collector; he’s been a pal to artists. After Brant bought his first Warhol when he was just 21, Andy and Peter ended up taking trips together: to Aspen, Europe, and closer to home, Montauk. [Wall Street Journal]

This summer, the Met is coming out with yet another blockbuster fashion exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture. (That title probably sounds better when said aloud in a death metal growl.) We kid you not, there will be a CBGB bathroom installed in the Met. [New York Magazine]

Developers are currently digging up a few more blocks of High Line, north of 30th street, now to be added to the the existing park. [Curbed; Crain’s]

Gross. Julia Halperin reports more museum woes, thanks to shoddy leadership. After this week’s news that MoMA plans to demolish the old Folk Art Museum building, the US Bankruptcy Court has ordered around 200 works seized from its collection. The works had been promised to the museum in 2005 by its former chairman, collector and jewelry merchant Ralph Esmerian, who later used the same work “as collateral to secure multi-million-dollar loans from Sotheby’s and Christie’s.” Esmerian never repaid his debts, and he’s currently in prison for wire fraud, so Sotheby’s will be selling them off this winter. Christie’s is upset because the work isn’t getting sold at Christie’s. Just drag it right through the mud. [The Art Newspaper]

Shoddy leadership is a plague. Felix Salmon explains how Cooper Union’s board mismanaged funds they were charged with overseeing, and must now, in direct violation of founder Peter Cooper’s vision, charge tuition. No one has been held accountable. [Felix Salmon]